Margaret Daley - Carbon Copy Cowboy

“Is she all right?” asked a different voice, a masculine one that felt oddly familiar. Yet, when she tried to put a face and name together with the sound, she drew a blank.

“Back up,” ordered a third voice, also masculine and quietly authoritative. She sensed a presence hovering over her, then a finger lifted her right eyelid, sending a shaft of pain straight through her eyeball. She clapped a hand over the eye, only to have the procedure repeated on the left side, blessedly with less pain. “She’s conscious.”

Shuffling sounds followed. Then “Miss, I have some questions for you.” The words came out rough and gravelly.

“Leave her alone, George,” a woman snapped.

“I got a job to do,” the sheriff pointed out plaintively.

Cracking her eyelids open, she let the light bathe her retinas and sighed with the lack of pain from that quarter, at least. Emboldened, she opened up all the way and stared at the four heads bending over her. Two obviously belonged to medical personnel, the woman and a prematurely graying gentleman who was even then shrugging into a lab coat. A tag sewn to the white garment identified him as “Dr. Garth.” The third face, round and balding beneath a tan cowboy hat, bore the unmistakable stamp of a cop. The last face nearly took her breath away.

So handsome that he was almost pretty, despite the dark slash of his brows peaking out from behind unkempt chestnut hair and the shadow of a beard on his smooth jawline, he had unusual dun-colored eyes—light brown like the coat of a buckskin horse, ringed with dark lashes. Everything about him screamed Cowboy! From the style of his faded blue shirt to the battered, sweat-stained hat that he held in his wide, long-fingered hands.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She watched his dusky lips forming the words, and the sound of his voice told her that she ought to know him, but she didn’t. She didn’t know any of them. Suddenly alarmed, she jackknifed up into a sitting position.

“Where am I?” she began, but the pain exploding inside her head stopped all but the first word. Clapping both hands over her face, she felt the bandage that covered her forehead and held back her hair. Obviously, she had been injured. Gulping back the nausea that clawed at her throat, she fixed her gaze on the doctor and rasped, “H-how many s-sutures?”

“Ten,” he answered matter-of-factly.

She relaxed marginally. It couldn’t be too serious, then. Ten sutures in a human seemed relatively minor, though how she knew that, she couldn’t be sure. Still, she did know it. Even as she mulled that over, the pain began to recede to bearable levels. Her eardrums still throbbed, but she no longer felt as if someone had buried an ax in her skull.

“Now, then,” said the voice that belonged to George, “you up to answering some questions?”

She started to nod but thought better of that and croaked, “Y-yes. You’re police, aren’t you?”

“That’s right... George Cole, Grasslands sheriff.” He stuck out a big, soft hand, which she shook carefully.

“Where is Grasslands?”

“Why, it’s here, o’ course,” he said, glancing at the other occupants of what was clearly an examination room.

“What am I doing here?” she asked.

“That’s what we want to know,” he said, dropping his hands to the gun belt that circled his thick waist. Drawing up her knees to get more comfortable, she noticed a spot of blood on her pale yellow T-shirt.

“I don’t have a clue,” she told him, looking up. “Can’t someone tell me what’s going on?”

“You wrecked your car,” said the cowboy.

A car wreck. “I don’t remember being in an accident.”

“Jack here stayed with you until we could get the ambulance out there,” the doctor clarified.

The cowboy offered his hand then, saying, “Jack Colby.”

Just as she slid her hand into his, George prodded, “And your name would be...?”

She opened her mouth, but the words weren’t there. “Huh,” she said, frowning. “My name is...” A great void swamped her, a vast sea of absolutely nothing. “That’s ridiculous,” she muttered, straightening her legs again. “My name is...” She looked up, on the verge of panic, switching her gaze from one face to another until it came to rest on Jack Colby. “What is my name?” she asked, reaching out to clasp a handful of his shirt when he gave his head a short, truncated shake. “Please,” she pleaded, her voice rising.

“I didn’t find anything in the car with you,” he said apologetically, “no purse, no driver’s license, no registration papers, nothing.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” she exclaimed. As the full import of her situation hit her, she swung her legs off the hospital bed, letting them dangle above the floor. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I am!”

“Nurse,” the doctor directed.

The patient quickly found herself lying flat on her back again while the doctor examined her and rapped out orders.

“I’m going to need a CT and a blood workup. Let’s start an IV and administer a sedative.”

“I don’t know who I am,” she repeated, trying desperately to find a way around that awful truth.

A hand fell on her shoulder. She turned her head to find the too-handsome cowboy, Jack, gazing down solemnly.

“It’s okay,” he told her gently. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll put out some feelers,” George said. “Even without a license plate on the car, we ought to get something off the VIN.”

“What? No license plates?” she asked. “How is that even possible?”

“That’s what we was hoping you could tell us,” the sheriff pointed out, adding, “you’re gonna need to stick around until we figure this thing out. I’ll see if there’s any stolen car reports or missing persons in the area that fit.”

“Stolen!” she gasped. “B-but I would never... That is, I can’t imagine...” Yet, how could she know what she’d do when she didn’t even know her own name?

“It’s just a formality,” Jack Colby assured her, looking pointedly at George, who waved a hand.

“SOP. Standard Operating Procedure. Now, why didn’t I think to bring along a camera? Doc, you got any way to take her photo so I can circulate it around?”

“Here, I’ll do it,” Jack said, pulling out his phone. While he snapped the photo, George grumbled about the city refusing to buy him and his deputies the latest smartphones. “What’s your email address?” Jack interrupted, saving the picture to his phone. George told him, and the cowboy sent the photo off with a swooshing sound.

“That’ll sure make things easier,” George told him. “Won’t even have to scan it up before sending it out.”

The subject of the photograph didn’t know whether to hope someone recognized her or not, considering that her likeness would be going out to law-enforcement agencies.

As if he sensed her dilemma, George smiled and patted her hand. Then he ruined the gesture by saying, “Just don’t leave the county, little lady, until I tell you it’s okay.”

Her eyes widened as a whole new problem emerged. “Where am I going to stay? Do I even have any money?”

“Didn’t find any,” Jack murmured sympathetically.

“You’ll be staying right here for the time being,” the doctor decreed. “I want you here for observation at least for tonight.”

“That’s good enough for now,” George decided. Turning to leave, he doffed his hat, saying, “I’ll be in touch.”

Her mind whirling, she closed her eyes. “Lord, help me,” she whispered fervently. “Lord, help me.”

She felt a warm, gentle touch at her throat and looked up to find Jack Colby fingering a small gold cross at the end of a delicate gold chain looped about her neck. Looking at that cross gave her a small sense of peace; yet she couldn’t recall ever having seen it before this moment.